Dedicated to Preserving Our Built Heritage September 2019 Volume 46, No. 3 Château Laurier: How did it come to this? By Peter Coffman

Stop this proposed addition DONATE NOW! Photos: Courtesy The Ottawa Citizen CourtesyOttawa Photos: The www.heritageottawa.org

Since it opened in 1912, the Château Laurier has been an integral part of the symbolic heart of our Nation’s Capital.

Despite a massive public outcry, City Council voted on July 11 to allow this defacing addition. IT’S NOT OVER! Photo: City of Ottawa dev apps of Ottawa City Photo: Heritage Ottawa is raising funds Proposed addition to the north side of the Chateau Laurier toward a legal challenge to protect the integrity of the Château and its nationally symbolic landscape. Despite a massive wave of public addition’s lack of compatibility opinion and expert analysis urging with the heritage building to which YOUR SUPPORT COUNTS! otherwise, Ottawa City Council voted it is attached. All donations, large or small, on July 11 to allow the proposed will make a difference. Tax receipts incompatible addition to the iconic Compatibility may sound hopelessly will be issued. Château Laurier to go ahead. Caught subjective, but in fact there are PLEASE DONATE NOW! up in procedure over consequences, coherent principles behind it and many councillors voted in favour of time-tested ways of achieving it. The Online at GoFundMe (gofundme. the project even after publicly stating new can simply reproduce the forms com/save-chateau-laurier-sauver) of the old, which happened when the or by cheque payable to Heritage how much they disliked it. Cries of Ottawa (with “Château Laurier” “Shame!” resonated from the packed Château was enlarged in 1927. Or the on the memo line). public gallery. new can allude to the old in a more metaphorical way by echoing salient For more information visit: How did it come to this? forms, patterns and other design Heritageottawa.org/ save-chateau-laurier From the very beginning, this issue characteristics in a modern addition. or call 613-230-8841 has been about compatibility — This is what Diamond Schmitt did or, more precisely, about the planned at the National Arts Centre in 2017. 1 How did it come to this? (contd.)

Or the new can eschew the forms (and benefiting from) a publicly of the old completely, but express owned park, canal and parliamentary its underlying ethos and values in buildings. It is a private building Heritage Ottawa is a non-profit contemporary architectural language in which the public has a huge and organization dedicated to the as Arthur Erickson did at the Bank of legitimate stake. Yet what passed for preservation of Ottawa’s built heritage. Canada in 1974. “consultation” amounted to a parade of speakers, mostly affiliated with the Hunter McGill Ignoring all of these paths to building’s owner, explaining why they Guest Editor compatibility is not really making an thought the design was brilliant. Jan Soetermans “addition” to the historic building A truly consultative process would Graphic Designer at all — it’s just marking territory. not have meant unanimity on another And that’s what is happening at the design, but we could have had a public Katari Imaging Château Laurier. Printing that was engaged, rather than enraged. The Château is picturesque, romantic It was ultimately up to City Council to Heritage Ottawa and playful. Its towers, turrets 2 Daly Avenue accept or reject the result. According and gables are an integral part of Ottawa, Ontario K1N 6E2 to the Mayor, Council did not have the sublime, rugged silhouette of the authority to dictate to private Tel: 613-230-8841 Parliament and its surroundings. property owners what style or architect Fax: 613-564-4428 The planned addition is essentially should be used. This ignores the Email: [email protected] a box: all straight lines, right angles fact that City Council had not only Web: www.heritageottawa.org and mathematical precision. It does the authority but the duty to reject not echo the older building’s forms, any addition deemed unsuitable to Board of Directors nor does it join in its romantic spirit. a heritage building. Although not a single councillor could find anything Richard Belliveau What will disappear is a series of iconic positive to say about the design, a François Bregha views of the Château Laurier: from majority voted to accept it. They Peter Coffman Major’s Hill Park, from the Bytown genuinely seem not to know that they Museum, from the river and from Julie Dompierre have a legal responsibility to enforce Gatineau. But it’s not just the Château the Ontario Heritage Act. Zeynep Ekim that will be affected. Parliament Hill, Louise Fox the Rideau Canal (itself a UNESCO Next steps Ian Ferguson World Heritage Site) and the Château In order to obtain a building permit Hilary Grant form an ensemble, all situated on the owner, Larco Investments, a dramatic landscape that these Linda Hoad must obtain a minor variance at the structures were carefully crafted to David Jeanes Committee of Adjustment that complement. This vista has been on Anne Maheux would allow the removal of the our dollar bill and on our postage Heritage Overlay on the property. Leslie Maitland stamps. It is emblematic of the This is a public forum that welcomes Heather McArthur capital, and by extension the nation. input by citizens concerned about Hunter McGill The addition will draw a curtain what is being proposed. Heritage Robert Moreau across an integral part of one of the Ottawa will be participating in that country’s most spectacular and revered Carolyn Quinn process and will be notifying others architectural tableaux. Martin Rice as the date approaches. Katherine Spencer-Ross How did the process fail? Peter Coffman is the supervisor of Carleton Heritage Ottawa acknowledges the First, there’s the design process. University’s History and Theory of Architec- financial support of the City of Ottawa Yes, the Château Laurier is private ture Program, past president of the Society for and the Ontario Ministry of Culture property. But it is also a designated the Study of Architecture in Canada, and a heritage building, abutting member of the board of Heritage Ottawa. 2 Heritage Ottawa’s Rural Heritage Initiative By Sampoorna Battacharya Heritage Ottawa’s Rural Initiative aims to improve heritage awareness and advocacy of rural historical villages of Ottawa, as advised by the residents of rural communities. Several rural residents, heritage leaders and City Councillors have been interviewed over the summer to better understand the challenges and potential concerning rural heritage conservation.

If you would like to provide your thoughts and ideas on how Heritage

Sampoorna Battacharya Ottawa can better publicize and advocate for rural heritage, please

Photo: Photo: email us at [email protected] Metcalfe Village grocery store and pizza shop Rural communities are the heart Thinking of “Ottawa” brings to there. Due to this, the heritage of of Ottawa, contributing to our mind the Parliament buildings, the rural Ottawa has been overlooked, livelihoods which are enriched with famous Rideau Canal, the Byward neglected and underrepresented in healthy food and greenspace. Rural Market, with its daytime charm as inventories of heritage properties. heritage deserves to be understood, well as its thrilling nightlife, and celebrated and protected for the excellent museums and galleries. On January 1st, 2001, eleven generations to come. Although often assumed to be a small municipalities were amalgamated Sampoorna Battacharya has been the city, Ottawa is geographically larger under the jurisdiction of Ottawa. Heritage Ottawa office manager/intern than the cities of Vancouver, Calgary, Before amalgamation, the townships for 2019. She will leave Ottawa soon Edmonton, Toronto and Montreal were represented by their own mayors to pursue post-graduate studies at the combined. Ninety percent of this land and municipal councils. Afterward, University of Guelph. is rural, but with only ten percent the previous townships became wards of the total population residing within Ottawa.

Heritage Ottawa 2019-2020 lecture series. Heritage Ottawa’s 2018-19 lecture series concluded with a fascinating talk on modern residential architecture in Ottawa by architectural historian Saul Svirplys. This fall’s lectures will continue with our modernist theme as we celebrate the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Bauhaus movement. Our line up includes a history of modernism in Canada with Globe and Mail architecture critic Alex Bozikovic (rescheduled from February 2019) as well as presentations featuring reuse and renewal of modern sites in Ottawa and around the world. Our traditional emerging scholar pub night, a history of Vanier and Ottawa’s LGBTQ communities, a look into the Algonquin Way Cultural Centre, and the captivating stories of two local restoration efforts round out the programme. Watch for all the details on the Heritage Ottawa website or in the 2019-20 lecture series brochure coming to your mailbox later this summer.

3 Adaptive re-use of heritage buildings: A conversation with architect practitioners Robert Martin and Mark Brandt By Hunter McGill Are commissions for adaptive weighing down future re-use of heritage buildings development potential, welcome? Do they allow for which is often not true architectural creativity? at all. The task of the architect is to persuade Mark Brandt (MB) There is and educate the owner/ considerable scope for creativity, developer on adaptive taking into consideration the building re-use and its value as ecosystem, and being mindful and attractiveness. of the context in which it sits. Successfully revitalizing and renewing Have you done the existing structure challenges the adaptive-re-use architect’s creativity. Adaptive re-use projects you believe of heritage buildings helps reduce our are noteworthy and carbon footprint, recognizing and could be models for Hunter McGill Hunter retaining their embedded energy future projects?

Robert Martin (RM) A further RM The former TD Photo: challenge for the architect is to Bank at the corner of Richmond Sir John A Macdonald building overcome the consequences of Road and Churchill Avenue, now on Wellington Street, previously a “deferred maintenance” of an old Gezellig Restaurant, is an example bank and now a federal government building. Though the developer of a “standard” 1950s-1960s conference space may want to get a bigger structure commercial building with good to compensate for existing building features and materials which was Hill, with heritage significance to the retention and repair, the architect adapted to open up interior spaces interior and exterior spaces, presented should emphasize the attraction of the and enlarge windows to admit more challenges in terms of which elements dialogue between old and new and light, while respecting the original of the collection of buildings to retain the story of the original building and silhouette. The Dome Building at or dismantle (ie Bate Hall) in order to its material, re-used respectfully. Rideau Hall, originally a 19th century provide opportunities to accomodate heating and lighting gas storage facility, new structures essential to the MB We should not overlook was restored and adapted for use as financial success of the adaptive re-use industrial built heritage, though offices for the Governor General’s project overall. Also, the Sir John A the origins of a building may secretariat, requiring the installation of Macdonald building on Wellington be “unpleasant” (exploitation of an elevator and other features to meet Street, previously a bank and now labour, brownfield consequences), code stipulations, while respecting a federal government conference opportunities for re-use remain. distinctive exterior features. Also the St space, necessitated the incorporation th Industrial buildings from the late 19 Charles project on Beechwood Avenue, of significant technical features and th and early 20 centuries have many involving preservation and adaptation security features. As an example interior and exterior features which of a church and sympathetically adding of what is possible, MTBA has offer opportunities for retention and a link to the new building components prepared proposals for the building re-use. The tendency is to demolish. of the project. and grounds at 24 Sussex Drive, the Prime Ministerial residence, (“24 RM There is a perception that MB allsaints, redevelopment of a Designs for 24 Sussex”) focussing on heritage buildings are an “albatross”, former Anglican church in Sandy conservation and sustainability.

4 What are the opportunities This would require a sustained communicate the objectives of the and challenges in Ottawa for federal initiative, filtering down heritage register, a tool aimed at adaptive re-use? How should through the province to the documenting (not controlling) the the City encourage/facilitate municipal level. In the case of CHIS city’s built heritage resources. reports, these should be done from adaptive re-use? the start of the project planning MB and RM The City has to MB The federal government process, rather than waiting until resist façadism, which is not really owns many interesting buildings the design work is well advanced. re-use as the interior is lost and of the 1950s and 1960s which it is a slippery slope, very tempting RM The City has taken an important are candidates for renewal, and to some developers who can claim step by increasing the grants available could be adapted and rehabilitated to be preserving through this to property owners for heritage to incorporate re-use elements. “Lick and Stick” approach. This building repair and restoration, There are many opportunities to approach fails to retain the existing though the amounts are still modest be found in the redevelopment buildings’ embodied energy which in terms of the cost of work for of the Parliamentary Precinct is lost in the required demolition. some candidate buildings; this along Wellington Street. In terms can be an important incentive for Robert Martin is Principal/CEO at of potential actions to promote individual owners. The City could Robertson Martin Architects, Ottawa adaptive re-use and rehabilitation investigate using Section 37 offsets there are examples of tax and grant for development approvals to create Mark T Brandt is Principal at MTBA incentives implemented in the USA additional incentives for larger scale Architects, Ottawa over the last 40-50 years, based on projects. As Mark has commented, the evidence that preservation and (This article has been condensed from the economic impact of built heritage adaptive re-use has significant socio- a rich and wide-ranging two-hour re-use is significant. City planning economic multiplier effects, using conversation on the many dimensions staff could make further efforts to important, rigorous criteria. of adaptive re-use.)

Note from the City of Ottawa’s Heritage Planning Section Court Curry, Manager, Right of Way, Heritage and Urban Design, City of Ottawa

The prelude to summer is always a thrusts and I encourage you to see an owner’s intent to do so. The project busy time at City Hall and this one our ambitious plans to develop new will be completed later this year with has been a busier one than usual heritage conservation district plans, the addition of properties affected in with several important heritage a commitment to more proactive parts of the city damaged by the 2018 applications, including the addition Part IV Ontario Heritage Action tornado and flooding. One of the to the Chateau Laurier. Wherever designations, and improving our legacies of this project is an interactive you sit on the spectrum, this proposal communications, through initiatives map on Ottawa.ca where you can see has provoked a healthy debate in our such as this note. all Register properties, including photos community on the importance of and their architectural descriptions. This Our second major initiative has been architecture and place-making. project is a giant step forward for the Council’s approval of 2,344 properties heritage program that will unlock many There have been two initiatives that to our robust new Heritage Register. other opportunities, and it wouldn’t have moved forward in the past With properties dating from the 1790s have been possible without the support month that will shape the heritage to the 1970s, the Register will serve of Heritage Ottawa over the years. program. The first is Council’s as a city-wide inventory of properties approval of our Term of Council We always welcome your ideas that have cultural heritage value that Heritage Action Plan - the City’s and comments about built heritage provides us with an opportunity to built heritage workplan for the next in Ottawa. For general inquiries take stock of our city’s finest jewels, and four years (available in the heritage please reach out to us at heritage@ also allows the City to monitor their section on Ottawa.ca). Connecting, ottawa.ca or myself directly at court. demolition through the requirement to Policy Innovation, and Process [email protected]. Best wishes for the provide the City with 60 days’ notice of Improvements are the three main summer ahead! 5 Heritage Ottawa Completes Hat Trick: Exploring Eastern Ontario By Nicole Sammut

Heritage Ottawa completes the hat trick this year with their third annual field trip to Eastern Ontario. Community members and Heritage Ottawa volunteers alike set out in late May to visit Ontario’s Gingerbread capital, Vankleek Hill followed by a Nicole Sammut Nicole visit to Macdonell-Williamson House Ferguson Ian near Pointe Fortune. Photo: Photo: Photo: Photo: The outing began with a walking Principal Historical Trompe I’oeil Guided Walking Tour with volunteer tour of Vankleek Hill from tour mural illustrating early storefronts Gary Barton, retired Mayor of guides, Debbie Hall and Gary and community life Vankleek Hill Barton from the Vankleek Hill & District Historical Society. The group was exposed to a wide variety of architectural features that define the Picturesque or Canadian Gingerbread style. These features are consistent in both the design of residential and commercial buildings within the town. Picturesque features include the decorated red brickwork accentuated by white, wooden trim, gables with asymmetrical rooflines, quaint porches and balconies. Buildings are further elaborated with detailed latticework, scalloped roof and porch tiles, columns, brackets Henderson George and spindles. Photo: Photo: There is a remarkable sense of Macdonnell-Williamson House, 1817 community pride and support in Vankleek Hill which is demonstrated by the continued care Following the walking tour, the group Heritage Ottawa would like to and maintenance of the countless headed near Pointe-Fortune to the acknowledge and thank all of the picturesque properties. This care Macdonell-Williamson House. The participants that joined us on our also extends to the historical murals two-storey villa was built by John visit to Eastern Ontario. Thank you painted by Elisabeth Skelly and Odile Macdonell on the Ottawa River in for another successful exploration of Tetu. Painted in the trompe-l’oeil 1817. The building is a National Ontario’s built heritage! style, the principal mural located Historic Site and an exemplary structure on Home Avenue illustrates early built by the North West Company fur Nicole Sammut is a volunteer and past storefronts and community life trading partners. While the structure member of the Heritage Ottawa Board of the town. Some of the murals is in need of extensive restorations, the of Directors. are currently under restoration to building is supported by the Friends of preserve their integrity and longevity. Macdonell-Williamson House.

6 A Century Later. What has come of the promise of Bauhaus and its “New Architecture”?

By Barry Padolsky (The unabridged version of this article first appeared in the Ottawa Citizen on December 1, 2018)

April 1, 2019, marked exactly In addition to architecture, the Gropius predicted, would embrace the 100 years since the founding of the Bauhaus taught painting, pottery, visual arts in “one unity and which iconic Bauhaus School of Design in sculpture, industrial design, furniture will one day rise toward heaven from Weimar, Germany. design, theatre, photography, film, the hands of a million workers like the glassmaking, weaving, graphics, crystal symbol of a new faith.” Born out of the ruins of the First typography and bookbinding. World War, the Bauhaus pioneered Utopian cities a “New Architecture.” Led by its The Bauhaus dream was to integrate founder, architect Walter Gropius the arts into a holistic habitat for Gropius advocated that the principles and his successors, Hannes Mayer, humanity. The New Architecture, of the New Architecture should also and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, be applied to city planning. the Bauhaus explored space and form using 20th century science and technology.

Learning from the lessons of the industrial revolution, Gropius and his peers, such as the Swiss/French architect Le Corbusier, argued that the New Architecture must embrace, not resist, standardization. It should exploit mass produced building materials such as steel, glass and concrete (beton brut).

This New Architecture, Gropius prophesied, would meet modern society’s urban needs through less cost and effort. Workers would be liberated for the pursuit of higher activities. The egalitarian dreams of the enlightenment would be fulfilled through applying the tools of industrial revolution to architecture. Buildings and indeed cities would be “machines for living.”

Design would have a new aesthetic, free of “dead styles from antiquity which ceased to have significance.” Building forms would reflect their Creative Commons Wikimedia/Janine Pohl Wikimedia/Janine Commons Creative functions and be unencumbered by ornamentation. Their beauty would Photo: Photo: be inherent in their pure forms. Bauhaus building (1925), designed by Walter Gropius. 7 Gropius argued that if the Bauhaus The promise of Bauhaus (contd.) evolved into just another visual “style,” its teachings will have failed. Former staff and students were persecuted, jailed and executed. He may have been prophetic. Walter Gropius and his colleagues fled Germany for America. Is modern architecture history? Notwithstanding its rejection by the Third Reich, modern architecture, In 1996, the Bauhaus campuses in named the “International Style” Weimar and Dessau, Germany, were by American historian Henry Russell declared by UNESCO to be World Hitchcock, was poised to sweep Heritage Sites. One wonders what the planet. Gropius and his colleagues would have felt about this honour.

Never ending modernism? On the 100th anniversary of the Bauhaus it may be worth re-

Creative Commons Wikimedia/Louis Held Wikimedia/Louis Commons Creative In the century since the birth of the Bauhaus, modern architecture examining the Bauhaus’s remarkable has evolved from a counterculture legacy: its revolutionary achievements Photos: Photos: movement to the default visual and its awesome failures. Walter Gropius, architect and founder language of an urbanized planet. of the Bauhaus School, circa 1919 Is it time to admit that the solutions More than 73 per cent of the planet’s offered by “modern architecture” may population inhabits the world’s Europe’s historic cities and have exhausted their usefulness? cities built since 1919. Their visual architecture, congested and unsanitary, habitat is a never-ending modernism. Is it time to concede that “modern should be replaced by new cities where Designing in “historical” styles has all architecture” may have mutated into blocks of apartment buildings 10 to but been abandoned. Would Gropius just another “historic style” with no 12 storeys high, spaced evenly apart in be pleased? intrinsic values to help us face our parkland settings, would incorporate contemporary urban cultural and the wholesome qualities of the Modern architecture, he warned, environmental challenges? countryside. could easily become fashionable and imitative. Even worse, it could The answers may be yes. These principles were dramatically reflect a form of “snobbery that illustrated In 1925 by Le Corbusier distorts the fundamental truth Barry Padolsky is the president of Barry in his urban renewal plan for Paris. and simplicity upon which the Padolsky Associates Inc. Architects, an In the “Plan Voisin,” the historic principles of the New Architecture Ottawa based architectural, urban district around the Louvre would be were founded.” design and heritage consulting practice razed and replaced with 18 identical founded in 1969. monumental cruciform towers set in parkland and bisected by freeways. “Paris of tomorrow” he wrote “could be magnificently equal to the march of events that is day by day bringing us ever nearer to the dawn of a new social contract.” To the relief of many, the project was never realized. Death of the Bauhaus Sadly, the Bauhaus was short-lived. In 1933, When Hitler’s National Socialist party seized power in Germany, the Bauhaus (now in Berlin) was forcefully shut down. Gropius House (1938) in Lincoln, Massachusetts 8